Gerald Warner is an author, broadcaster, columnist and polemical commentator who writes about politics, religion, history, culture and society in general.

US Congress investigates Climategate e-mails: this could be the beginning of the end for AGW

The United States Congress has begun the process of investigating the leaked climate change e-mails from the University of East Anglia, which means all attempts to suppress and shut down the scandal have failed. Already aides to Representative Darrell Issa (Republican, California), who is the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, have begun analysing the correspondence exposed by hackers.

At the same time, in the upper house, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has been told by Senator James Inhofe (Republican, Oklahoma) that unless it acts promptly on the matter he will call for an investigation into the state of climate science. The e-mails are of huge interest to American legislators because one of them was sent by White House Science Adviser Dr John Holdren, in 2003, when he was at the Woods Hole Research Center, Massachusetts, to support Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University.

In his own e-mail, which he has defended and not denied, Mann suggested colleagues should be encouraged to stop submitting papers to the journal Climate Research, as it had published a paper to which he objected. The involvement of a White House adviser has given the controversy political traction on Capitol Hill, where legislators are considering the Obama administration’s plans for cap and trade laws, just when Obama has committed himself to restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions and personal attendance at the Copenhagen climate summit in a month’s time.

At this most sensitive moment the whole climate scare is threatening to unravel with literally immeasurable consequences. The seriousness with which the Americans are treating this has highlighted just how pivotal the CRU at East Anglia is to the global warming hype. As American newsmen are pointing out, East Anglia claims the world’s largest temperature data set and its findings and mathematical models were incorporated into the IPCC’s 2007 report, which the US Environmental Protection Agency admits it “relies on most heavily” in deciding that carbon dioxide emissions must be curbed.

Now these e-mails are being read on the CBS site, revealing a farcical Carry On Researching scenario at East Anglia: “Apply a very artificial correction for decline!!” “Low pass filtering at century and longer time scales never gets rid of the trend – so eventually I start to scale down the 120-yr low pass time series to mimic the effect of removing/adding longer time scales!” And so on. Codes were erratic, the baffled researchers had no idea what was going on.

Joe Public is now reading this stuff, courtesy of CBS, and wondering just what the heck has been happening. Republicans will be asking Obama’s people how the Environment Protection Agency came to rely on the CRU’s projections. They will also be asking questions about e-mails referring to grants from the US Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to East Anglia. One of them allegedly says: “We need to show some left to cover the costs of the trip Roger didn’t make and also the fees/equipment/computer money we haven’t spent otherwise NOAA will be suspicious.”

Unless and until that e-mail is authoritatively denied (and none of them so far appear to have been), many will conclude that those sentiments encapsulate the ethos of the climate alarmist industry. Contrast, too, the speed with which American legislators have concerned themselves with this scandal and the indifference of our own parliamentarians and mainstream media. America may not have Beefeaters, historic stately homes, or the Queen; but when our Transatlantic cousins suspect they have been shafted by a bunch of wide boys in white lab coats they do not hang around.

While the British public has heard only whingers from East Anglia shouting that hacking into e-mails is a crime, it is the American media that are pointing out that deleting e-mail messages to conceal them from a FOI request in the United Kingdom is also a criminal offence. Congress, seeing an opportunity of derailing Obama, Al Gore and an attempt to cripple America to the tune of countless billions of dollars, is on the case. This is global news now.

Meanwhile, the CBS News website is running the George Monbiot quote: “It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The e-mails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging.” Too right.